During the recent campaign, the Democratic candidate for
governor took a swipe at Michigan’s charter schools, telling the Lansing State
Journal that they “lack accountability.”

Far from lacking accountability, charters actually meet one
critical measure of accountability that no other public schools can boast: the
ability of their customers to say “no, thanks” and take a walk. No Michigan
parent is required to send their child to a charter school. If, for any reason,
charter parents are unhappy, they can always return to a traditional public
school at any time.

Charter schools have exactly the kind of bottom-up
accountability needed to improve public education in Michigan. More than 66,000
students - just about 3 percent of public school students - benefit from charter
schools. At the same time, some 70 percent of charter schools have waiting
lists, according to the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, the
state association of charter schools.

Charter schools also have been criticized for their low test
scores. Last September, the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution
released a report indicating that children at America’s charter schools are
not scoring as well as their traditional public school counterparts.

Although the authors state, “We do not know why charters
performed at this level,” they do recognize the possibility that it could be
because charter schools largely have been accepting students who have not
performed well in traditional public schools. Think about it: Children who are
doing well and are happy with their assigned school aren’t likely to leave for
a charter.

And guess what? Research from the Mackinac Center for Public
Policy indicates that charter school test scores are rising at a much faster
rate than test scores at traditional public schools. If this trend continues,
student achievement in charter schools will soon catch up with and surpass that
of traditional public schools.

Further, a recent report authored by Hillsdale College
economist and former deputy state treasurer Gary Wolfram has encouraging
evidence on charter school effectiveness. Children who attend for at least two
years charter schools run by National Heritage Academies, a private company,
generally score higher than their public school peers on standardized tests.
National Heritage Academies operates 24 charter schools in Michigan.

It is ironic that in spite of these hopeful signs of the
growing effectiveness of charter schools, some want to regulate charters to
death in the name of “accountability.” Greater accountability is the whole
reason charters exist. But the growing amount of paperwork charter schools have
to file - in order to be even more accountable - is already aggravating
their administrators.

“You feel like you’re jumping through hoops, not helping
kids,” says David Angerer, chief administrative officer of the Black River
Public School, a charter school based in Holland. “Sometimes we can’t focus
resources on student needs, but are mired in reporting requirements.” Even
though his school “fills out every piece of regulatory paper the public
schools do,” the school also must comply with regulations from its charter
authorizer, Grand Valley State University. This combination often produces a
mountain of paperwork so large that it requires a diversion of resources from
the school’s main purpose, educating students.

Much of the push for more regulations is driven by the threat
charter schools pose to union power. Luigi Battaglieri, president of the
Michigan Education Association, wrote in a Sept. 10, 2002 letter that he wanted
to “put checks and balances into the charter school movement” through
enactment of HB 4800, a bill that mandates a host of new charter school
requirements. Needless to say, this is not the first time a special interest has
attempted to get government to restrict its competition.

The dirty little secret of Michigan’s education
establishment is that it doesn’t really believe the system (that is, itself)
needs to be reformed. That’s why reformers devised the idea of charter
schools, and also vouchers and tuition tax credits: as ways to impose reform
from outside the system. And charters, at least so far, are making headway. This
terrifies the establishment, which wants to dub them a failure, limit their
numbers and regulate them out of existence.

This - and our children’s futures - are the best reasons to
keep charters thriving in Michigan.

#####

(Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., is director of education policy at the Mackinac
Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in
Midland, Mich. More information is available at www.mackinac.org.
Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided the author
and his affiliation are cited.)

ISSN: 1093-2240,
SKU: V2002-44

Summary

Recently, Michigan’s 186 charter schools have come under
unfair attack because of alleged “lack of accountability,” and because their
students, on average, score lower than their public school counterparts. But
charter schools are accountable in a way no traditional public school is -
parents can remove their children if they aren’t satisfied. And charter
student test scores are actually rising faster than those of their traditional
public school counterparts.